A consortium of mobile phone operators, manufactures and IT companies wants the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the organization in charge of the top-level domain name system, to consider a new top-level domain name for websites designed specifically for use on mobile phone screens. The consortium includes Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Nokia, Orange, Samsung, Sun Microsystems and Vodafone. The new domain name is expected to be .mob although it has not been confirmed by the consortium or ICANN.
According to the consortium, a mobile top-level domain on the Internet would create the opportunity to streamline the development of new Internet sites optimized for mobile usage and thus simplify the Internet experience for mobile subscribers and increase the use and speed of delivery of mobile Internet services.
With handsets constantly growing more sophisticated and powerful, and with the introduction of third generation mobile phone services, mobile phone operators hope to increase their revenue by making Internet services an integral part of their portfolio.
According to a report published by Gartner, mobile phone sales grew 21 per cent in 2003 compared with 2002 and the number of sold handsets reached 520 million worldwide. Nokia is the leader on the mobile phone manufacturing market with sales of 180.6 million handsets last year, although its market shared fell slightly from 35.1 to 34.7 per cent. Samsung registered sales of 54.4 million and increased its market share from 9.7 to 10.5 per cent. Siemens sold 43.7 million handsets and achieved a market share of 8.4 per cent compared to 8 per cent in 2002. LG registered sales of 26.2 million cell phones and its market share grew as well from 3.2 percent in 2002 to 5 percent in 2003.
